Cisco, Intel, and Citrix Re-invent OpenStack Networking for the Enterprise

Over the last few months an additional subproject codenamed Quantum has emerged which deals explicitly with networking and has particpation from networking giants Intel and Cisco as well as from Citrix. It’s a mechanism for defining network topologies aimed at providing Layer-2 network connectivity for VM instances running in clouds based on the OpenStack cloud fabric. It is designed to be extensible to allow higher-level services (VPN, QoS, etc) to be built on top, and to cleanly handle the “edge of network” problem (i.e. the binding of the cloud into the internet).

News: Citrix Acquires Cloud.com

Citrix has purchased Cloud.com and this poses some interesting changes to the overall virtualization and cloud markets. One also has to wonder about the timing of the announcement to coincide with the same day as the big announcements coming out of VMware. I see this purchase as a mixed blessing to the market place, but also a renewal for Citrix.

Ericom blazes forward with an HTML5 Client for VDI

Ericom AccessNow is the first HTML5 client for Microsoft RDP/VMware View. An HTML5 offers the option of organisations delivering access to services not only from personal devices, or kiosk terminals, but from the growing range of devices that have a browser as their core OS such as the Chromebook. At the moment, this is a freely available resource – I’d recommend a look.

HP embraces AppSense for Reference Architecture

In a press release on June 29, 2011 AppSense announced that its User Virtualization Platform is now a core building block of HP’s new Client Virtualization Reference Architecture. Along with Microsoft, VMware and Citrix, AppSense User Virtualization has been recognized by HP as a crucial technology for a successful architecture that meets the goals for client virtualization.

Xen Founders Leave Citrix to Tackle Cloud Security Woes

At Citrix Synergy 2011 in San Francisco last month Simon Crosby made the case that the biggest barrier to the adoption of service-provider offered cloud services is the understandable lack of trust on the part of enterprise customers. Well it looks as if he and fellow Xen luminary Ian Pratt have decided to do something about that lack of trust and are moving on from Citrix to address the problem at its source. Ian and Simon announced today that they are both leaving Citrix and taking key roles along with with Gaurav Banga (the creator of Phoenix Hyperspace) as co-founders of cloud security start-up Bromium.

VirtuAll User Environment Manager Released

About 18 months ago fellow Citrix Technology Professional Pierre Marmignon realized that there was a gap in the market for a simple robust user environment management solution that could remove the continual nightmare of managing complex Windows logon scripts and user environment settings in virtual desktop environments. Skip forward to today and Pierre has just announced the release of VirtuAll User Environment Manager (VUEM), and it is excellent.